11.30.09

I love ordering gifts from the Jerusalem Gift Shop. They have so many really interesting and ideal gifts. But time is running out if you are planning to get items in time for Christmas. Since each gift is shipped directly from Israel, it will soon be too late to get them here in time.

Take a moment and browse their on-line store for wonderful gift ideas.

Incoming message to Global Warming “Scientist”:“Discontinue use of your decoding machine…and dispose of immediately. Special emphasis on destroying important parts…and burn all secret documents.”

OK, a little humor this morning, courtesy of the movie “Pearl Harbor”, as Dan Aykroyd, playing the part of Capt. Thurman in Navy Intelligence, advises Washington of messages to the Japanese embassy ordering them to destroy their decoding equipment and burn all of their secret documents.
It appear our global warming “scientist” have received the same message, and are doing everything in their power to maintain their global warming agenda, despite a great amount of evidence contrary to that position.

SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.

It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.

The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.

The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape — were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building.

he admission follows the leaking of a thousand private emails sent and received by Professor Phil Jones, the CRU’s director. In them he discusses thwarting climate sceptics seeking access to such data.

In a statement on its website, the CRU said: “We do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (quality controlled and homogenised) data.”

The CRU is the world’s leading centre for reconstructing past climate and temperatures. Climate change sceptics have long been keen to examine exactly how its data were compiled. That is now impossible.

Roger Pielke, professor of environmental studies at Colorado University, discovered data had been lost when he asked for original records. “The CRU is basically saying, ‘Trust us’. So much for settling questions and resolving debates with science,” he said.

Jones was not in charge of the CRU when the data were thrown away in the 1980s, a time when climate change was seen as a less pressing issue. The lost material was used to build the databases that have been his life’s work, showing how the world has warmed by 0.8C over the past 157 years.

He and his colleagues say this temperature rise is “unequivocally” linked to greenhouse gas emissions generated by humans. Their findings are one of the main pieces of evidence used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which says global warming is a threat to humanity.

Our education systems continue to spin wildly out of control as the liberal educators will accept no other course than complete acceptance of their liberal agenda.

A program proposed at the University of Minnesota would result in required examinations of teacher candidates on “white privilege” as well as “remedial re-education” for those who hold the “wrong” views, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

The organization, which promotes civil liberties on the campuses of America’s colleges and universities, has dispatched a letter to University of Minnesota President Robert Bruininks asking him to intervene to prevent the adoption of policies proposed in his College of Education and Human Development.

“The university’s general counsel should be asked to comment as soon as possible,” said the letter from Adam Kissel, an officer with FIRE. “If the Race, Culture, Class, and Gender Task Group achieves its stated goals, the result will be political and ideological screening of applicants, remedial re-education for those with the ‘wrong’ views and values, [and] withholding of degrees from those upon whom the university’s political re-education efforts proved ineffective.”

By any “nontotalitarian” standards, he wrote, the the plans being made so far by the school are “severely unjust and impermissibly intrude into matters of individual conscience.”

Kissel wrote that it appears that the university “intends to redesign its admissions process so that it screens out people with the ‘wrong’ beliefs and values – those who either do not have sufficient ‘cultural competence’ or those who the college judges will not be able to be converted to the ‘correct’ beliefs and values even after remedial re-education.”

“These intentions violate the freedom of conscience of the university’s students. As a public university bound by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, the university is both legally and morally obligated to uphold this fundamental right,” he wrote.

Among the issues discussed in the plans are requirements that teachers would be able to instruct students on the “myth of meritocracy” in the United States, “the history of demands for assimilation to white, middle-class, Christian meanings and values,” and the “history of white racism.”

The demands appear to be similar to those promoted earlier at the University of Delaware.

As WND reported, the Delaware university’s office of residential life was caught requiring students to participate in a program that taught “all whites are racist.”

School officials immediately defended the teaching, but in the face of a backlash from alumni and publicity about its work, the school decided to drop the curriculum, although some factions later suggested its revival.

Minneapolis Star-Tribune columnist Katherine Kersten said the developing Minnesota plan would require teachers to “embrace – and be prepared to teach our state’s kids – the task force’s own vision of America as an oppressive hellhole: racist, sexist and homophobic.”

She said the plan from the university’s Teacher Education Redesign Initiative – a multiyear project to change the way future teachers are trained – “is premised, in part, on the conviction that Minnesota teachers’ lack of ‘cultural competence’ contributes to the poor academic performance of the state’s minority students.”

“The first step toward ‘cultural competence,’ says the task group, is for future teachers to recognize – and confess – their own bigotry. Anyone familiar with the re-education camps of China’s Cultural Revolution will recognize the modus operandi,” she said.

“What if some aspiring teachers resist this effort at thought control and object to parroting back an ideological line as a condition of future employment?” she posed. “The task group has Orwellian plans for such rebels: The U, it says, must ‘develop clear steps and procedures for working with nonperforming students, including a remediation plan.'”

The plan asks: “How can we be sure that teaching supervisors are themselves developed and equipped in cultural competence outcomes in order to supervise beginning teachers around issues of race, class, culture, and gender?”

The original correct answer was to have “a training session disguised as a thank-you/recognition ceremony/reception at the beginning of the year.”

Presidential politics is about storytelling. Presented with a vivid storyline, voters naturally tend to fit every new event or piece of information into a picture that is already neatly framed in their minds.

No one understands this better than Barack Obama and his team, who won the 2008 election in part because they were better storytellers than the opposition. The pro-Obama narrative featured an almost mystically talented young idealist who stood for change in a disciplined and thoughtful way. This easily outpowered the anti-Obama narrative, featuring an opportunistic Chicago pol with dubious relationships who was more liberal than he was letting on.

A year into his presidency, however, Obama’s gift for controlling his image shows signs of faltering. As Washington returns to work from the Thanksgiving holiday, there are several anti-Obama storylines gaining momentum.

The Obama White House argues that all of these storylines are inaccurate or unfair. In some cases these anti-Obama narratives are fanned by Republicans, in some cases by reporters and commentators.

But they all are serious threats to Obama, if they gain enough currency to become the dominant frame through which people interpret the president’s actions and motives.

Here are seven storylines Obama needs to worry about:

He thinks he’s playing with Monopoly money

Too much Leonard Nimoy

That’s the Chicago Way

He’s a pushover

President Pelosi

He’s in love with the man in the mirror

But, as the novelty of a new president wears off, the Obama cult of personality risks coming off as mere vanity unless it is harnessed to tangible achievements.

That is why the next couple of months — with health care and Afghanistan jostling at center stage — will likely carry a long echo. Obama’s best hope of nipping bad storylines is to replace them with good ones rooted in public perceptions of his effectiveness.

I think the Republicans would be wise to listen to this. People are tired of the absolutely liberal agenda we are currently seeing. Republicans will not be successful until they return to their conservative roots.

The vice chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC) is promoting a proposed resolution that would warn 2010 GOP candidates that if they do not respect the party’s “conservative values,” they will not receive the financial backing or endorsement of the RNC.

The Republican Party needs to reclaim its conservative bona fides,” argues [Jim Bopp, vice chairman of the RNC]. “The problem is that we lost our way on fiscal conservative policies at the end of the Bush administration with expanding government and increasing debt, and then support of bailouts. So we need to show that we are serious about governing as conservatives.”

Bopp says the Republican Party’s message is compromised when the party supports liberal Republican candidates like DeDe Scozzafava in the 23rd Congressional District of New York.

As a result of the Louisiana Purchase Part Deux on the night of Saturday, November 21st, Harry Reid has forced the American people one step closer to the proverbial cliff, an eventual near-complete takeover of the once proud American way of life. It goes without any need for further explanation that all of the policy decisions coming out of this administration, let alone the cultural behemoth that is health care, simply make no mathematical sense whatsoever.

Whether this is the result of some deliberate, calculated attempt with an underlying agenda or complete, unabashed ignorance is a question that can be debated by future generations; resolving the threats that we face in the here and now is the task at hand.

The one question that I think gnaws at the back of the minds of many common sense conservatives these days, however, is why these liberal Democrats are intent on embarking on such a reckless–some would say politically suicidal, as it applies to those Democrats who are up for re-election in 2010–course of action. Why are they doing this?

Seemingly with each passing day, there’s some new outrage coming out of Washington, and the beginnings of the resurgent conservatism that we’re all beginning to sense in this country is making it more and more clearly evident that this is indeed a center-right nation and that, for the most part, Her people have no use for the extreme measures being undertaken by this administration. Yet these people continue on the path of “the ends justify the means,” so much so that they’re not even bothering to hide the boldness of their political machinations any longer. Transparency indeed.

I think, however, that there is an answer (of sorts) to this question. Many of the men and women who constitute the far-left of the Democratic Party are what I would label Ideological Kamikazes. We may be witnessing a suicide mission, and I think there’s a bit more to the metaphor than merely what the label suggests.

I don’t think anyone who reads America’s Right and other political blogs of the same type would dispute the contention that we are, in a very real sense, in the midst of a sort of civil war. Our battlefield, however, is not Gettysburg, Bull Run, Okinawa, or Iwo Jima; our shots are being fired on the Battlefield of Ideas. As with any great war or battle, there comes a time when the momentum shifts, usually as a result of a variety of reasons: lack of manpower, resources, political and/or popular support, and so on.

In the context of this metaphor, I think it important to look to two of America’s staunch adversaries of the past sixty-odd years: imperial Japan and radical Islam. An interesting case can be made that both of these political and cultural entities had and continue to have two things in common: they represent altogether different cultural values, and both may have begun to at least perceive that their very existence (way of life) was and is in peril.

One of the foundational tenets of any entity involved in a war of any sort is that when it opts for suicide warfare–which is decidedly different from the notion of honorable sacrifice–it has reached the point at which surrender or any form of compromise with the enemy is no longer an option.

Our liberal Democrats, if they haven’t reached that point already, may be quickly approaching it. As I’ve said, however, I feel that there’s more to this than initially meets the eye.

Generally speaking, the military rationale for suicide warfare is that the people making preparations for battle reach a point at which they begin to realize that they truly lack the adequate resources with which to engage the enemy; other and better alternatives to the last, best measure–terrorism–no longer exist. In the case of Japan, the military decision to move forward with kamikaze missions was the empire’s last, desperate attempt to balance the ever-increasing industrial and technological might of the advancing American forces in specific and the West in general. While Japan had munitions available, their resources both in armaments and manpower were rapidly diminishing. While suicide warfare would no doubt deplete them of even more manpower, Japan had reached the point of needing a force multiplier. Not only did each bomb have to count, but the damage had to reach maximum output. Anything less would be a wild failure.

Radical Islam’s situation is quite similar, although the battle that is being waged is more cultural in nature than overtly political. There’s no question in my mind that the prevailing crux of the conflict is founded in the dichotomy of West vs. East; the specific source(s) of that in which we find ourselves currently engaged, however, would seem to be the Iranian Revolution of 1979 (which, in addition to other political factors, was heavily influenced by the sense on the part of many fundamentalist Muslims that many young people in the Middle East were becoming far too “Westernized” in the manner in which they behaved, dressed, thought, etc. — after all, who would want to be free, right?) and Afghanistan’s decade-long war with the Soviet Union, which, upon its conclusion, was subsequently followed by the United States’ near-immediate pullout from the area, leaving a vacuum of both power and resentment.

Here again, much as in the case of Japan, I’m guessing that there are quite a few fundamentalist Muslims who see Western Civilization as a threat to their very cultural survival. Lacking the military organizational and industrial might of America, these terrorists have taken up the very same kamikaze tactics of World War II Japan — guided smart bombs, only on a completely unheard of and unimagined level.

In the case of the liberal Democrats currently in Congress, it seems as though there’s far more at hand than merely trying to get health care reform legislation passed. The behavior of some of these people leads me to think of what, in the psychological field, is deemed the “sunk-cost dilemma.” Simply put, these ideologues have so much invested in bringing their platform to fruition–even at the expense of the United States as a whole–that common sense and logic no longer factor into any equation; having arguably invested–financially, politically, emotionally, and otherwise–40-plus years into their endgame, defeat, surrender or compromise are no longer political options. It’s the entire socialized package or nothing at all. They must now choose between the certain loss of the sunk costs if they were to actually acknowledge political realities versus possible–even if unlikely–electoral success should they charge ahead. These Marxist Democrats seem to tend to favour uncertain success over the certain loss of political manpower in the fallout.

In my mind, then, there’s no doubt that these politicians may in fact view themselves in much the same light as imperial Japan at the end and radical Islam in the here and now, given that their agenda has now been exposed and that they’re likely to find themselves short of adequate political resources in the very near future — popular and political support, for instance, in addition to manpower in Congress. As a result, the leftist Democrats may now view as necessary the political suicide of some of their cherished “Blue Dogs,” because the very existence of their worldview is at stake.

The torpedoes will take the form of outrageous bribes, and the spectacular detonations to the side of the USS Constitution will be outlandish. It is important to note, however, that history clearly shows that those countries who eventually turned to the tactic of suicide warfare have always lost their war.

WASHINGTON – While attorneys representing the co-author of “Muslim Mafia” were preparing late today to honor a federal court order to return documents obtained from the Council on American-Islamic Relations in an independent undercover operation, FBI agents served a warrant on a Washington, D.C., law office for the same documents.

The FBI agents entered the capital law offices of Cozen O’Connor tonight and issued a warrant for thousands of pages of documents as well as audio and video recordings gathered by P. David Gaubatz and his son Chris in a daring and lengthy undercover penetration of CAIR in which the younger Gaubatz served as an unpaid intern for the group that was labeled an unindicted terrorist co-conspirator in last year’s Holy Land Foundation trial.

CAIR claimed in a lawsuit that Gaubatz removed its papers and made recordings of employees “without any consent or authorization and in violation of his contractual fiduciary and other legal obligations.” A federal judge in Washington issued a restraining order Nov. 3 barring the Gaubatzes from further use or publication of the material – 12,000 pages of documents along with audio and video recordings – and demanding that they return it to the Muslim group’s lawyers.

However, last night the FBI stepped in with a warrant, suggesting the agency wants to see the papers and examine the recordings as part of its interest in CAIR and its Hamas terrorist links, including those involving its founding chairman and acting executive director.

Joseph Farah, chief executive officer of WND and its subsidiary, WND Books, who has been raising money for the defense of his author and son, welcomed the FBI’s interest in the papers.

“Obviously, we were prepared to honor the court order from Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly,” he said.

Kollar-Kotelly – who as head of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court made several controversial decisions against the Bush administration’s counterterrorism policies – was criticized recently by many security experts for ruling against the military’s designation of a Guantanamo detainee as an enemy combatant, allowing the Obama administration to send him home.

“Now,” said Farah, “we will have to confer with the attorneys to determine what happens next. Which takes precedence – a federal court order or an FBI warrant? I trust this will be sorted out in the days to come. Personally, I would like to see these papers in the hands of trained FBI investigators. The revelations raised about CAIR in ‘Muslim Mafia’ have clearly piqued the agency’s interest.”

In fact, adds Farah, “I would say the nature of this warrant and the way it was served strongly suggests the FBI doesn’t want these documents returned to CAIR – where they were destined to be destroyed in the first place. We have always believed, as the Gaubatzes did, that there is valuable evidence here vital to the nation’s security.”

The FBI’s grand-jury subpoena is intended to preserve the status quo and not intended to require the Gaubatzes’ legal counsel to turn over the documents immediately – or before notifying Judge Kollar-Kotelly.

CAIR contends the documents were stolen. David Gaubatz insists the research described in his book, including securing the documents, “was conducted professionally and legally” in cooperation with law enforcement officials. Much of the relevant material is already in the hands of the FBI, he said.

The Gaubatzes are being represented by high-profile First Amendment specialist Martin Garbus, most famous for representing Daniel Ellsberg in the Pentagon Papers case. Garbus is teamed with Bernard Grimm of Cozen O’Connor in Washington and Daniel Horowitz in the San Francisco Bay area. Horowitz, a frequent TV legal analyst, represented talk-radio host Michael Savage in his lawsuit against CAIR. Grimm also is a regular commentator on the Fox News Channel, CNN and Court TV.

In Gaubatz’s book, “Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That’s Conspiring to Islamize America,” he and co-author Paul Sperry present firsthand evidence CAIR is acting as a front for a well-funded conspiracy of the Muslim Brotherhood – the parent of al-Qaida and Hamas – to infiltrate the U.S. and help pave the way for Saudi-style Islamic law to rule the nation.

In the lawsuit, however, CAIR, a self-described Muslim civil-rights group, does not defend itself against the book’s claims.

The FBI cut off ties to CAIR in January after the group was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation case in Texas, the largest terrorism-finance case in U.S. history. Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer of New York and other senators have called for a government-wide ban on CAIR.

Garbus told WND he believes Americans have an interest in exposure of the CAIR documents, because they are relevant to federal law enforcement officials’ concerns about the group’s ties to terrorist operatives that threaten the nation’s security.

“The more information you have, the better able you are to form a judgment about the organization,” he said.

Garbus said the Gaubatz lawsuit has similarities to his defense of legal author and CNN commentator Jeffrey Toobin, who allegedly violated a confidentiality agreement with Iran-Contra investigator Lawrence E. Walsh in the early 1990s when he published a book about his experience as a member of the prosecution team. Garbus won the case on First Amendment grounds.

CAIR alleges Chris Gaubatz signed a confidentiality agreement when he worked as an intern for six months, but Gaubatz denies it, and CAIR reportedly says it has no copy of any agreement.

In any event, Horowitz says CAIR has bigger things to worry about: “If a grand jury hears even half of what is in the ‘Muslim Mafia,’ CAIR will be destroyed and its leaders could face massive prison terms.”

11.25.09

The perceived necessity of a Manhattan Declaration would have jarred the Pilgrims from prayerful contemplation of game birds and the like at harvest festival time, 1621. What — religious liberty so uncertain a thing as to warrant, five centuries later, a 4,700-word document justifying Christian defense of Christian principles?

Even so. On Nov. 20, a coalition of American religious leaders signed the said “Manhattan Declaration: A Call to Christian Conscience” — making known their intention not to “compromise their proclamation of the gospel,” even unto — though they hope not — civil disobedience.

“Unjust laws degrade human beings,” say the signers, whose number by the following Monday had swelled from an original 145 to 42,000 (such is the reach of the Internet). “Inasmuch as they can claim no authority beyond sheer human will, they lack any power to bind in conscience.” Edicts, rules, attempts of any sort to force observance of non-Christian moral norms — the signers aren’t going to go along, and they think it’s as well to let the world know now.

What goes on here anyway? An attempted political cramdown goes on, in the view of the Declaration signers; an uncoordinated yet nevertheless widespread assault on Christian moral values goes on, in the name of secular, politically correct ideals.

“We see [it] … in the effort to … compel pro-life institutions (including religiously affiliated hospitals and clinics) and pro-life physicians, surgeons, nurses and other health care professionals to refer for abortions and, in certain cases, even to perform or participate in abortions. We see it in the use of anti-discrimination statutes to force religious institutions, businesses and service providers of various sorts to comply with activities they judge to be deeply immoral or go out of business.

“After the judicial imposition of ‘same-sex marriage’ in Massachusetts, for example [Massachusetts — wasn’t that where those Pilgrims lived?] Catholic Charities chose with great reluctance to end its century-long work of helping to place orphaned children in good homes rather than comply with a legal mandate that it place children in same-sex households.

“In New Jersey, after the establishment of a quasi-marital ‘civil unions’ scheme, a Methodist institution was stripped of its tax exempt status when it declined, as a matter of a religious conscience, to permit a facility it owned and operated to be used for ceremonies blessing homosexual unions. In Canada and some European nations, Christian clergy have been prosecuted for preaching Biblical norms against the practice of homosexuality. New hate-crime laws in America raise the specter of the same practice here.”

A related specter rises, to the likely consternation of many who see religious belief as just a set of outdated, sexist, homophobic prejudices. The specter is from the ’60s: anti-war protesters shouting, “Hell, no, we won’t go!” See what happens when you set a precedent for defiance? Not that the Declaration’s framers (scholars, editors, pastors, university and seminary presidents, broadcasters, Roman Catholic bishops and archbishops) need precedent beyond that of their own tradition, which sees the ordinances of the state as less lofty than the commands of God — cf. Martin Luther King Jr. The declaration reprises Christ’s famous reminder that God and Caesar possess very different patches of ground in this world.

A model of clarity and non-squishiness (in an age given to intellectual muddle and the desire Never to Offend), the declaration attacks the presumption and moral vacuity of the pro-choice, anti-traditional marriage agenda. It reminds us, no less usefully, that the supposedly exhausted “culture wars” aren’t nearly finished.

One trouble with secularists, and even with some Christians of “progressive” outlook, is a tendency to see moral principles as malleable, changing with elections and regulations. In fact, moral principles — at least in the normative Christian understanding — reflect reality: God’s handiwork, performed in such a way and not another; one way “right,” another way not right at all.

On goes the argument. One thing it does seem progressives shouldn’t count on is an Appomattox-like surrender of the opposition. If anything, the opposition strengthens — to the relief of many, among them the Manhattan Declaration signer who writes these words.

My old writing partner, the Leftist animation writer Steve Marmel, posited a question recently. He was thrown by the concept of “fairness” in the news, arguing — rightly — that facts and truth, not “balance,” should be the news media’s objective.

And it once was.

All this changed with the “cultural revolution” of the 1960s when objectivity went out of style. The argument put forth by the Modern Liberals was that the individual is incapable of being objective. They argue everything a person believes is so tainted by their personal bigotries – bigotries borne of the color of their skin, the color of their hair, the nation of their great-great-great grandfather’s birth, their height, their sex and their weight, etc. — that the only way to eliminate the evils of bigotry is to eliminate all attempts at rational thought.

Since the 1960s, the Modern Liberal has been preaching that rational thought is a hate crime.

Writing about this phenomenon as it relates to one of the communities most infected with the Modern Liberal dogma, the leftist news media, the great Thomas Sowell argued that the quest for objectivity has been replaced with the quest for ”neutrality.” What’s the difference between objective reporting and neutral reporting?

Consider a journalist covering a football game and the Jets have just defeated the hapless Patriots 57-3. (Hey, this is MY post, I can make up the score.) An objective journalist would write a report about how the Jets are a better team than are the Patriots. The story would feature key plays and decisions that highlighted New York’s superiority to the New England franchise on that day.
But what if all sports reporters had it drummed into their heads that they were not allowed to write a piece that in any way implied that one team was better than any other? Given the objective fact — the final score — not only would the reporter’s story not reflect the Jets’ superiority, but they would have to in some way explain how it is that two equally good teams saw such disparate results. The only way for this reporter to be neutral and deal with the objective facts would be to invent a false narrative whereby the evidence does not prove the obvious. If the Jets aren’t a better team, then they must have stolen the Patriots’ playbook. If the Patriots aren’t an inferior team, then the officials must have been bought off.

Consider the coverage of Nidal Hasan’s massacre of 14 innocent people at Ft. Hood. The objective reporter writes about the clear and obvious link between the murderer and his Muslim faith. But the neutral reporter — the one who has been taught that he cannot imply in any way that one culture or one religion is better or worse than any other — will not only not write the objective truth, but he will seek to invent a narrative that proves the murderer has been victimized.

Just as the sports reporter could not write that the Jets are a better team and therefore had to turn the good into the bad (the cheater), the neutral news reporter had no choice (i.e. would not be a “good reporter”) unless he ignored the truth, which, in turn, left him no choice but invent a storyline where the mass murderer was the victim and his victims the bad guys.

“Neutrality” is just another form of the indiscriminateness that I write about and another example of how indiscriminateness of thought does not lead to indiscriminatess of policy but rather invariably and inevitably sees the Modern Liberal side with evil over good, wrong over right, and failure over success.

A House bill still being drafted aims to raise $150 billion each year to pay for new jobs.

Under a bill being drafted by Democratic Reps. Peter DeFazio (Ore.) and Ed Perlmutter (Colo.), the sale and purchase of financial instruments such as stocks, options, derivatives and futures would face a 0.25 percent tax.

The bill, a copy of which was obtained by The Hill, is titled the “Let Wall Street Pay for the Restoration of Main Street Act of 2009.”

To liberals and Democrats, I guess it makes sense to take money away from the businesses who hire people in order to create jobs. To these same people, up is down, light is dark and they apparently have no ability to discern reality from fantasy.

Half of the $150 billion in tax revenue would go toward reducing the deficit, while the other half would be deposited in a “Job Creation Reserve” to support new jobs.

The job fund would be available to offset the additional costs of the 2009 highway bill and other legislation that creates jobs.

The Obama administration and congressional Democrats are looking for ways to create jobs after the nation’s unemployment rate hit 10.2 percent in October and job losses are expected to rise.

House leaders have mentioned the possibility of a tax on stock transactions, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) appeared to raise questions about the approach last week. Pelosi said such a move would need to be done in conjunction with efforts in other countries.

“Obviously, we have to work with leadership on this,” said Leslie Oliver, spokeswoman for Perlmutter. “It has a long way to go, but the idea is to stir debate … We think this is one idea that makes a lot of sense.”

The stock tax measure specifies that tax revenue would need to support jobs that pay at least the median wage in the United States, promotes manufacturing jobs and prohibits any recipient of the $700 billion financial bailout from directly benefiting from the job reserve fund.

The bill aims to exempt retirement accounts from the impact of the tax.

A group of consumer watchdog organizations and labor unions sent DeFazio a letter this week supporting the tax bill.

11.24.09

Navy SEALs have secretly captured one of the most wanted terrorists in Iraq — the alleged mastermind of the murder and mutilation of four Blackwater USA security guards in Fallujah in 2004. And three of the SEALs who captured him are now facing criminal charges, sources told FoxNews.com.

The three, all members of the Navy’s elite commando unit, have refused non-judicial punishment — called an admiral’s mast — and have requested a trial by court-martial.

Ahmed Hashim Abed, whom the military code-named “Objective Amber,” told investigators he was punched by his captors — and he had the bloody lip to prove it.

Now, instead of being lauded for bringing to justice a high-value target, three of the SEAL commandos, all enlisted, face assault charges and have retained lawyers.

So a terrorist gets a bloody lip during his capture and now the elite Navy SEALS are going to be prosecuted.

Unbelievable.

We stand beside you, Navy SEALS. We stand beside you, U.S. Military. Thank you for protecting us. If a terrorist needs a bloody lip (or worse) in order to protect us and other innocent people, then by all means, give the terrorist a bloody lip (or worse). The terrorist gave up his rights when he wagged a war of terror on innocent people. You folks in the military are our heroes. Please never forget that.

The source said intelligence briefings provided to the SEALs stated that “Objective Amber” planned the 2004 Fallujah ambush, and “they had been tracking this guy for some time.”

The Fallujah atrocity came to symbolize the brutality of the enemy in Iraq and the degree to which a homegrown insurgency was extending its grip over Iraq.

The four Blackwater agents were transporting supplies for a catering company when they were ambushed and killed by gunfire and grenades. Insurgents burned the bodies and dragged them through the city. They hanged two of the bodies on a bridge over the Euphrates River for the world press to photograph.

Intelligence sources identified Abed as the ringleader, but he had evaded capture until September.

The military is sensitive to charges of detainee abuse highlighted in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. The Navy charged four SEALs with abuse in 2004 in connection with detainee treatment.

Apparently too sensitive. Another case of out of control political correctness. Our enemies must be very proud of what we have become.

Censorship of dissenting viewpoints is one of the first steps any want-to-be dictator takes as he seizes power.

TEL AVIV – Websites should be obliged to remove “false rumors” while libel laws should be altered to make it easier to sue for spreading such “rumors,” argued Cass Sunstein, Obama’s regulatory czar.

In his recently released book, “On Rumors,” Sunstein specifically cited as a primary example of “absurd” and “hateful” remarks, reports by “right-wing websites” alleging an association between President Obama and Weatherman terrorist Bill Ayers.

He also singled out radio talker Sean Hannity for “attacking” Obama regarding the president’s “alleged associations.”

Ayers became a name in last year’s presidential campaign when it was disclosed the radical worked closely with Obama for years. Obama also was said to have launched his political career at a 1995 fundraiser in Ayers’ apartment.

As WND reported, Obama and Ayers sat together on the board of a Chicago nonprofit, the Woods Fund. Ayers also was a founder of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, where Obama was appointed as its first chairman in 1995.

Ayers reportedly was involved in hiring Obama for the CAC – a job the future president later touted as qualifying him to run for public office.

WND columnist Jack Cashill has produced a series of persuasive arguments that it was Ayers who ghostwrote Obama’s award-winning autobiography “Dreams from My Father.”

However, such reports were characterized by Sunstein as “absurd” charges for which corrective measures can be taken.

Sunstein’s book – reviewed by WND – was released in September, after he was already installed as the administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.

“In the era of the Internet, it has become easy to spread false or misleading rumors about almost anyone,” Sunstein writes.

“Some right-wing websites liked to make absurd and hateful remarks about the alleged relationship between Barack Obama and the former radical Bill Ayers; one of the websites’ goals was undoubtedly to attract more viewers,” he writes.

Sunstein continues: “On the Internet as well as on talk radio, altruistic propagators are easy to find; they play an especially large role in the political domain. When Sean Hannity, the television talk show host, attacked Barack Obama because of his alleged associations, one of his goals might have been to promote values and causes that he cherishes.”

Sunstein presents multiple new measures he argues can be used to stop the spread of “rumors.”

He contends “freedom usually works, but in some contexts, it is an incomplete corrective.”

Sunstein proposes the imposition of a “chilling effect” on “damaging rumors” – or the use of strong “corrective” measures to deter future rumormongers.

For websites, Sunstein suggests a “right to notice and take down” in which “those who run websites would be obliged to take down falsehoods upon notice.”

Sunstein also argues for the “right to demand a retraction after a clear demonstration that a statement is both false and damaging.” But he does not explain which agency would determine whether any statement is false and damaging.

Sunstein further pushes for “deterrence” through making libel lawsuits easier to bring.

Sunstein drafted ‘New Deal Fairness Doctrine’

Sunstein’s proposals outlined in his book “On Rumors” were not the first of his writings to recommend regulating talk radio or the news media.

WND previously reported Sunstein drew up a “First Amendment New Deal” – a new “Fairness Doctrine” that would include the establishment of a panel of “nonpartisan experts” to ensure “diversity of view” on the airwaves.

Sunstein compared the need for the government to regulate broadcasting to the moral obligation of the U.S. to impose new rules that outlawed segregation.

Sunstein’s radical proposal, set forth in his 1993 book “The Partial Constitution,” received no news media attention and scant scrutiny until the WND report.

In the book, Sunstein outwardly favors and promotes the “Fairness Doctrine,” the abolished FCC policy that required holders of broadcast licenses to present controversial issues of public importance in a manner the government deemed “equitable and balanced.”

Sunstein introduces what he terms his “First Amendment New Deal” to regulate broadcasting in the U.S.

His proposal, which focuses largely on television, includes a government requirement that “purely commercial stations provide financial subsidies to public television or to commercial stations that agree to provide less profitable but high-quality programming.”

Sunstein wrote it is “worthwhile to consider more dramatic approaches as well.”

He proposes “compulsory public-affairs programming, right of reply, content review by nonpartisan experts or guidelines to encourage attention to public issues and diversity of view.”

The Obama czar argues his regulation proposals for broadcasting are actually presented within the spirit of the Constitution.

“It seems quite possible that a law that contained regulatory remedies would promote rather than undermine the ‘freedom of speech,'” he writes.

Sunstein compares the need for the government to regulate broadcasting to the moral obligation of the government stepping in to end segregation.

Writes Sunstein: “The idea that government should be neutral among all forms of speech seems right in the abstract, but as frequently applied it is no more plausible than the idea that it should be neutral between the associational interests of blacks and those of whites under conditions of segregation.”

Sunstein contends the landmark case that brought about the Fairness Doctrine, Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. Federal Communications Commission, “stresses not the autonomy of broadcasters (made possible only by current ownership rights), but instead the need to promote democratic self-government by ensuring that people are presented with a broad range of views about public issues.”

He continues: “In a market system, this goal may be compromised. It is hardly clear that ‘the freedom of speech’ is promoted by a regime in which people are permitted to speak only if other people are willing to pay enough to allow them to be heard.”

In his book, Sunstein slams the U.S. courts’ unwillingness to “require something like a Fairness Doctrine” to be a result of “the judiciary’s lack of democratic pedigree, lack of fact-finding powers and limited remedial authority.”

He clarifies he is not arguing the government should be free to regulate broadcasting however it chooses.

“Regulation designed to eliminate a particular viewpoint would of course be out of bounds. All viewpoint discrimination would be banned,” Sunstein writes.

But, he says, “at the very least, regulative ‘fairness doctrines’ would raise no real doubts” constitutionally.

The lawyer for the five defendants who will be tried in New York says his clients will plead not guilty so that they can air their criticisms of U.S. foreign policy. Attorney Scott Fenstermaker told Associated Press recently the men would not deny their role in the September 11, 2001, attacks but “would explain what happened and why they did it” as well as “their assessment of American foreign policy.” (See related article)

Robert Alt, deputy director of the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation, wonders why the Justice Department is trying some but not all of the Guantanamo Bay terrorists in civilian courts.

“They don’t even seem to have a justification for why it is we’re trying some of them — ‘It adheres to the rule of law,’ [they say]. Well, it also adheres to the rule of law to try them before military commissions,” Alt contends. “It’s fully consistent with the laws of war.”

According to the Heritage spokesman, explanations as to why the trial is taking place in a civilian court imply the action is merely a formality. “[I]ndeed, some of the statements that they’ve made, they’ve said that they’ll get the guilty conviction, they’re confident of that. And there were suggestions by [Senate Majority Leader Harry] Reid and others that if they don’t, that they can still hold them as enemy combatants and wouldn’t release them,” he states. “Well, that sounds like they’ve already come to the conclusion in the case.”

There is little doubt that our church fathers had the right motivation for faith. All of them except the apostle John died a martyr’s death. Paul suffered endlessly for the sake of the gospel. He provided this short list of his troubles in 2 Corinthians: “Of the Jews five times received I forty [stripes] save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep” (2 Corinthians 11: 24-25).

Danish philosopher and theologian Soren Kierkegaard once famously said, “The biggest problem with Christians today is that no one wants to kill them anymore.” Someone living in a Muslim country might disagree, but the statement holds true for us believers who live in the Western world. Kierkegaard also argued that Christianity has been made so completely devoid of character that there is really nothing to persecute.

Most people are involved in Christian service because they love Christ and want to glorify Him. However, monetary gain, praise, or recognition motivates some Christian workers. Others do it because they feel empty and want to bring fulfillment into their lives. Some people create their own blogs or websites because it makes them feel important and needed.

My work with Rapture Ready has taught me to be very discerning about what motivates people. I’ve had some folks help with the site for a time, but then I eventually learned that their motivation was not Christ-centered. Here are three examples of faulty motivation from RR and one from another site:

I once had a gentlemen help put together information for our “Timeline” section. He did this for at least two years. One day I received a note from someone who told this gentleman was telling his gay buddies that he helped operate a Christian website. Of course, he was promptly informed that we had a major incompatibility problem.

We briefly had someone helping Mat Buff on Rapture Ready Radio. A gentleman named Jimmy was the co-host of the weekly live broadcast. Mat soon noticed that Jimmy wasn’t into prophecy, and he preferred to handle issues from a secular viewpoint. After we let him go, Jimmy sent me profanity-laced emails claiming he partly owned RR as his intellectual property. Because we were still in the testing phase of the web radio program, I never saved the segments that involved him.

In April of 2007, we had a major split on our message board. The need for the reorganization was triggered by our head admin saying she was not a believer. One of the key mods stepped up and claimed that the members of our board were her personal property. Because she had worked to build up the board, she claimed ownership over these people. We gave her everything she wanted because we knew a web venture founded on this mindset would only end in disaster, and it did. The members didn’t agree with her, because the vast majority of them came back to RR.

I once found a website that was loaded with all sorts of good Christian information. One day, I noticed a statement by the site’s owner, who said he was closing down his domain. This web venture was hosted by a service that provided free space. Apparently, the ads in the margin weren’t generating enough money, so the company decided it needed to start charge members a small fee. The guy running the website didn’t want to pay any money to keep his ministry going. I just couldn’t believe that five bucks a month was too much of a hurdle for him to continue.

One of the questions I often hear about the time ahead of the rapture is: “Will Christians have to endure some form of persecution or economic calamity?” I tend to believe that there will not be any major trial before the Lord takes us home, but that we may see a brief period of hardship.

I’ve often wondered what would happen to the Christian web community if the winds of change turned, making it difficult to maintain a site. If the laws of the land said it was illegal to present the true gospel message, I am sure the vast majority of domains would disappear. The same thing would happen if the economy turned south. We’ve already made plans to help ensure that RR survives any type of adversity.

There is no great cost for being an end-time watcher, so I encourage everyone reading this article to ask yourself: What is my motivation? I would hope that most of you can list several things you’ve done for the kingdom of God in the past year. The key to good motivation is whether you would be willing to do it again in a hostile environment.

My hope is that the rapture snatches us away before the world gets more evil. The day may come when your faith is tested, and you may need to draw upon your foundation of faith to endure until the blessed hope.

“Behold, I come quickly: blessed is he that keepeth the sayings of the prophecy of this book” (Revelation 22:7).

FYI:
Missi and I own our domain and have never received any outside financial support for our ministry. It is a sizable financial investment (at least for our budget it is), but it is worth every penny of it.

Here is a perfect example of how gun laws, like the type Democrats would like us to be subjected to and already in force in the U.K., prosecute the innocent, while doing nothing to control criminals. Common sense is out the window and law-abiding people are prosecuted.

A former soldier who handed a discarded shotgun in to police faces at least five years imprisonment for “doing his duty”.

Paul Clarke, 27, was found guilty of possessing a firearm at Guildford Crown Court on Tuesday – after finding the gun and handing it personally to police officers on March 20 this year.

The jury took 20 minutes to make its conviction, and Mr Clarke now faces a minimum of five year’s imprisonment for handing in the weapon.

In a statement read out in court, Mr Clarke said: “I didn’t think for one moment I would be arrested.

“I thought it was my duty to hand it in and get it off the streets.”

The court heard how Mr Clarke was on the balcony of his home in Nailsworth Crescent, Merstham, when he spotted a black bin liner at the bottom of his garden.

In his statement, he said: “I took it indoors and inside found a shorn-off shotgun and two cartridges.

“I didn’t know what to do, so the next morning I rang the Chief Superintendent, Adrian Harper, and asked if I could pop in and see him.

“At the police station, I took the gun out of the bag and placed it on the table so it was pointing towards the wall.”

Mr Clarke was then arrested immediately for possession of a firearm at Reigate police station, and taken to the cells.

Defending, Lionel Blackman told the jury Mr Clarke’s garden backs onto a public green field, and his garden wall is significantly lower than his neighbours.

He also showed jurors a leaflet printed by Surrey Police explaining to citizens what they can do at a police station, which included “reporting found firearms”.

Quizzing officer Garnett, who arrested Mr Clarke, he asked: “Are you aware of any notice issued by Surrey Police, or any publicity given to, telling citizens that if they find a firearm the only thing they should do is not touch it, report it by telephone, and not take it into a police station?”

To which, Mr Garnett replied: “No, I don’t believe so.”

Prosecuting, Brian Stalk, explained to the jury that possession of a firearm was a “strict liability” charge – therefore Mr Clarke’s allegedly honest intent was irrelevant.

Just by having the gun in his possession he was guilty of the charge, and has no defence in law against it, he added.

But despite this, Mr Blackman urged members of the jury to consider how they would respond if they found a gun.

He said: “This is a very small case with a very big principle.

“You could be walking to a railway station on the way to work and find a firearm in a bin in the park.

“Is it unreasonable to take it to the police station?”

Paul Clarke will be sentenced on December 11.

Judge Christopher Critchlow said: “This is an unusual case, but in law there is no dispute that Mr Clarke has no defence to this charge.

Racial Discrimination: any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.

Notice that according the U.N.’s definition, racism is not just white on black, as many in this country would have us believe, but is ANYTIME a person is denied equality based on race, no matter what color they are.

The question was recently posed to me, “Do you think Obama is a racist?” I answered, “Obama is the best kind of racist to whites, but the worst kind of racist to blacks.” My questioner was perplexed.

I began by explaining that Obama’s racism against whites is upfront, in-your-face racism, which he discussed in his book Dreams from My Father:

I ceased to advertise my mother’s race at the age of 12 or 13, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites.

I found a solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against my mother’s race.

Obama learned this racist ideology during his formative years from his mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, a self-admitted communist and sexual deviant, and most certainly a racist — the kind that blacks say cannot exist.

As Robin of Berkeley suggested in an article in American Thinker, “Davis blamed racism and capitalism for all of the problems in society and instructed young Barry, ‘Don’t fully trust white people,’ and ‘Black people have a reason to hate.'”

In Obama’s defense, his book was written prior to his emergence onto the scene in 2004. Perhaps he had formulated new ideas on whites, and had stopped “nursing that pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against [my] mother’s race”? Or not.

After the tutelage of Davis, Obama’s next-biggest “non-influence,” as it were, came in his twenty-plus-year association with Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Obama sold his racism to whites during his presidential campaign, saying that he didn’t really listen to the hate-speech wrongfully labeled “sermons” at his so-called church. This was a “church” that practiced Cone’s Black Liberation Theology,-a “theology” in which if the word “black” were replaced with “white,” the “church” would have undoubtedly been considered a haven for the Aryan Brotherhood. The Acton Institute reports:

The echoes of Cone’s theology bleed through the now infamous, anti-Hilary excerpt by Rev. Wright. Clinton is among the oppressing class (“rich white people”) and is incapable of understanding oppression (“ain’t never been called a n-gg-r”) but Jesus knows what it was like because he was “a poor black man” oppressed by “rich white people.” While Black Liberation Theology is not mainstream in most black churches, many pastors in Wright’s generation are burdened by Cone’s categories which laid the foundation for many to embrace Marxism and a distorted self-image of the perpetual “victim.”

Obama claimed that he didn’t pay attention to Wright’s rants. As Obama said, “I missed a lot of Sundays.” Liberal whites gave him yet another pass.

Post-election Obama continued to flaunt his racism in the face of whites by loading his team with black racists. His first appointment was a noted Black Nationalist, Van Jones, to the post of Green Jobs Czar. Appointing a Black Nationalist to this position by Obama would be like Bill Clinton appointing a Klansman to a similar position. At least with the latter appointment, the Left might have feigned outrage.

First, Black America exists in a state of colonial subordination to White America. Black America is a colony. It is and has always been subjected to political, economic, social, and cultural exploitation by White America. These circumstances define Black America’s “underdevelopment” as a nation. Political decisions are made by whites outside the black community; no black bourgeoisie with any meaningful economic power has been allowed to develop, and the major vehicles for cultural expression such as schools, radio, television, and the printed media are under white control.

One would think that with BET and The WB, and the all-black radio stations that you can find in any major city, that there is no longer a need for Black Nationalists like Van Jones, or even a Black Nationalist movement in general. However, no sooner was Van Jones appointed than we were treated to the racist stylings of Mark Lloyd, his most famous quip being, “…white people need to relinquish their power to others.” Others being “non-whites.”

As for Obama’s racism against blacks, you don’t have to be a genius to understand it. However, it is easier to understand if you are not a product of government schools. Obama’s racism against blacks is much more subtle, though exponentially more insidious.

Obama actually believes he helps blacks through his policies, when in fact the outcome devastates them. A good example is education.

Blacks recognize almost universally that education is the key to escaping the cycle of poverty and other ills plaguing the black community.

Obama’s first racist act as president was to remove the voucher program that Bush had established in D.C., a program that Democrats vote against overwhelmingly. This program was producing proven positive results, but it was eliminated — and black children in D.C. were relegated to socialized schools in crime and drug-infested neighborhoods. Simply put, why give black children the choice to opt out of the indoctrination?

Here is how one Liberal organization interpreted Obama’s actions:

Obama and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan have expressed their clear opposition to voucher subsidies for religious and other private schools and their support for a strong public school system. This is a sharp contrast to the Bush administration, which lobbied relentlessly for vouchers, imposed a voucher scheme on the District of Columbia and even held a last-minute conference to push for a government bail-out of financially troubled inner-city Catholic schools.

Obama thinks so highly of the public schools in D.C. (and Chicago) that he put his children in private school.

There are many other examples of these train-wreck policies of Liberals, and particularly with this administration — an administration that had poor blacks believing that Obama was Santa Claus. As with most policies implemented by Liberals, the real trickle-down impact ends up costing blacks more, making them that much more dependent on the government…the endgame orchestrated by then-Senator and racist Democrat Lyndon Baines Johnson, when he commented in 1957:

These Negroes, they’re getting pretty uppity these days and that’s a problem for us since they’ve got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we’ve got to do something about this, we’ve got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference. For if we don’t move at all, then their allies will line up against us and there’ll be no way of stopping them, we’ll lose the filibuster and there’ll be no way of putting a brake on all sorts of wild legislation. It’ll be Reconstruction all over again.

The first black president’s policies marginalize blacks. It is the cruelest sort of racism, as it robs blacks of hope instead of inspiring it. Blacks were left with the hope that Obama would redistribute money from creators of wealth to those who would gladly take something for nothing.

The president, voted for by overwhelming numbers of blacks and guilty whites, has likely been the most destructive force in racial politics since his fellow racist Democrat Bull Connor. And what Obama seeks for blacks — socialism, or the leveling of the playing field — has not benefited blacks anywhere on the planet.

On blacks’ ancestral continent, there is not one country that provides a beacon of hope. Africa is where one would think Obama could prove that his policies would work for blacks. Yet in Africa today, there are wars and rumors of wars. The outcome depends only on the “cide” you are on…infanticide, homicide, fratricide, or genocide. Dictators are pillaging the countries they should be serving, and the African people have nothing to show for it but abject poverty and oppression.

In Euro-socialist countries with representative black populations like France, Sweden, and others with representative black populations, there are no black leaders now or emerging. The fact is that the place where black people thrive best is the United States of America. America boasts more multi-millionaire black athletes, entertainers, business moguls, and so on than any country in the world — all due to capitalism.

Here’s the wrap:

Is Obama a racist? Of course he is! But as I say about racists, most just need to see what the other side is like. Obama knows conservatism only anecdotally, as he has never had a conservative friend. He understands only one side — the racist radical side. This is why sanity appears to be radical to him, why patriots are persecuted and achievers neutered.

A true conservative would never befriend a person like Obama. Obama needs to be surrounded by sycophants and suckups, or radical leaders he can admire. My hope is that Obama will actually get to know a few conservatives, black and white. Then maybe, just maybe, he will understand how he is both the best and worst kind of racist.

Kevin Jackson is author of the Amazon Best Seller, The BIG Black Lie, as well as his blog theblacksphere.net, and appears regularly on The Glenn Beck Show on Fox News Channel.

11.23.09

After all the dismal failures Obama has had for his appointees, I actually may have to agree with this one.

The California scholar and Obama donor tapped to be the first U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Council is a fierce critic of the United Nations’ human rights record who some watchdogs say they hope will roll some heads on the controversial panel boycotted during the Bush administration.

Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe has called the U.N. policy and record toward human rights abuses erratic, inhumane and dysfunctional, and has said its inherently flawed charter leaves human rights violators “immunized” from international interference.

In what would be a drastic shift from current policy, she recommended in her 2006 Ph.D. dissertation that the United Nations condition a country’s sovereignty on its human rights record. In other words, she argued that human rights abuses can justify invasion.

U.N. critics are cautiously optimistic she’ll bring that hard-nosed attitude to the council and be willing to confront the despots and alleged human rights abusers represented there.

“The council has been awful,” Hillel Neuer, director of U.N. Watch in Geneva, told FoxNews.com, saying he hopes the Obama administration doesn’t think it’s going to seek reform through “consensus” on the panel. “I’m confident that Donahoe, given her background, understands that and will take a vigorous approach to holding abusers to account.”

Watchdogs, though, are reserving judgment, in part because they are so disenchanted with the panel and in part because Donahoe does not have diplomatic experience.

“It’s great that they’ve picked somebody who at least from a substantive point of view understands some of the issues here,” said Paula Schriefer, director of advocacy for Freedom House. “What we don’t know is whether she’s a skilled diplomat who can kind of turn the culture around at the U.N.”

The Human Rights Council, whose current membership now includes, among others, Bolivia, Egypt, Nigeria, Russia and Pakistan, was shunned by the Bush administration over its obsession with censuring Israel and seeming disregard for alleged human rights abuses in other nations.

Just a few months after the Obama administration announced in March that it would seek election to the council, it again released a report deeply critical of Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip early this year, leading to condemnation from congressional lawmakers and the Obama administration.

According to a comprehensive assessment from Freedom House, 10 of the 18 condemnatory resolutions passed in the most recent two-year session targeted Israel. After the council was created as the successor to the equally controversial U.N. Commission on Human Rights in 2006, three of the four special sessions first called dealt with Israel. Meanwhile, member countries like China, Saudi Arabia and Cuba have escaped such official censure.

The decision to break the Bush administration’s boycott on the council was met with skepticism when the State Department announced in March that the United States would seek election to the council. Some accused the Obama administration of caving to the council and somehow legitimizing it.

But the administration argued that engagement can be more effective than isolation.

Donahoe also happens to be a top Obama fundraiser and the wife of eBay CEO John Donahoe. During the presidential campaign, she served as chairwoman of the National Women for Obama Finance Committee and was a prolific “bundler.”

She hosted one high-dollar fundraiser at her home in 2007, and by the end of the campaign had reportedly raised more than $1 million for the presidential candidate.

Donahoe will have to go through Senate confirmation. The White House did not respond to a request for an interview with the nominee who will attain ambassadorial rank if confirmed.

But Donahoe’s views on the United Nations were made clear in a recent 237-page dissertation. For her Ph.D. in ethics from the University of California’s Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Donahoe wrote her dissertation on the United Nations’ inconsistent track record on intervening to stop human rights abuses.

The 2006 paper, titled “Humanitarian Military Intervention: The Ethical Imperative Vs. the Rule of Law,” argued that the United Nations Security Council has never had adequate guidelines to address such abuses and suggested several reforms.

“Decisions with respect to intervention have been hesitant, too late, inconsistent, ineffective or all of the above,” she wrote. She cited the response in Rwanda in 1994, in Kosovo in 1999 and in East Timor the same year.

In an argument that would surely make a slew of U.N. members cringe, she wrote that the United Nations places too much value on state sovereignty, essentially forcing it to wait until it has permission from an alleged abuser to intervene.

As a solution, she said the United Nations could pass a resolution and amend its charter so that sovereignty is conditioned on a country’s ability to protect its citizens’ human rights. Donahoe generally argued that the U.N. charter’s conditions for military intervention — self-defense or Security Council authorization granted in order to stop a threat to international security — are too narrow.

She said that humanitarian atrocities should be counted as threats to international security, allowing the Security Council to meet the standard for legal intervention more easily. And she recommended a new set of standards for use of force.

Donahoe wrote that these changes would have “profound benefits,” since rogue nations would no longer believe they could “act with impunity against their own people.”

While these recommendations applied to the Security Council, the Human Rights Council can be a key venue to start applying pressure on the international community.

Neuer said that out of the 47 member countries, only 12 can be relied on to stand up for human rights. While the United States is just one vote, Neuer said the country’s new representative could round up enough members to call emergency sessions to “shame” countries like Sudan which he said have gotten a “free pass.” Even if U.S.-sponsored resolutions fail, he said, they would start to galvanize international attention and get countries on record on alleged abuses.

“The question is whether the administration is interested in doing that,” Neuer said. “The work means you’re going to shame abusers, to hold them to account. … It means upsetting the abusers, and making them walk out of the council with their tail between their legs and shamed with the mark of Cain.”

Donahoe comes to the international body with a largely academic background. Before her Ph.D, she earned her law degree from Stanford Law School, as well as a master’s degree in East Asian studies from Stanford University; a master’s in theology from Harvard University; and a bachelor’s from Dartmouth University.

She was most recently an affiliated scholar with Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. Before that, she worked as a teaching fellow at Stanford Law and worked with several human rights organizations.

Scott Sagan, co-director at CISAC, said in a written statement that given her background in ethical and legal dilemmas, Donahoe is eminently qualified to “help reinvigorate” the Human Rights Council.

Schriefer, while praising the administration for assigning Donahoe exclusively to the Human Rights Council, said Donahoe will have to show some political, not just academic, chops when she joins.

“She’s got her work cut out for her,” she said. “All the political players on the good side need to start getting as active as the political players on the bad side.”

Gail Gartrell sent me this statement reported as being made by Lt. Col. Allen West:

This past Thursday 13 American Soldiers were killed and another 30 wounded at a horrific mass shooting at US Army installation, Ft Hood Texas. As I watched in horror and then anger I recalled my two years of final service in the Army as a Battalion Commander at Ft Hood, 2002-2004.

My wife and two daughters were stunned at the incident having lived on the post in family housing.

A military installation, whether it is Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine, or Coast Guard, is supposed to be a safe sanctuary for our Warriors and their families. It is intended to provide a home whereby our “Band of Brothers and Sisters” can find solace and bond beyond just the foxhole but as family units.

A military installation is supposed to be a place where our Warriors train for war, to serve and protect our Nation.

On Thursday, 5 November 2009 Ft Hood became a part of the battlefield in the war against Islamic totalitarianism and state sponsored terrorism.

There may be those who feel threatened by my words and would even recommend they not be uttered. To those individuals I say step aside because now is not the time for cowardice. Our Country has become so paralyzed by political correctness that we have allowed a vile and determined enemy to breach what should be the safest place in America, an Army post.

We have become so politically correct that our media is more concerned about the stress of the shooter, Major Nidal Malik Hasan. The misplaced benevolence intending to portray him as a victim is despicable. The fact that there are some who have now created an entire new classification called; “pre-virtual vicarious Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)” is unconscionable.

This is not a “man caused disaster”. It is what it is, an Islamic jihadist attack.

We have seen this before in 2003 when a SGT Hasan of the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) threw hand grenades and opened fire into his Commanding Officer’s tent in Kuwait. We have seen the foiled attempt of Albanian Muslims who sought to attack Ft Dix, NJ. Recently we saw a young convert to Islam named Carlos Bledsoe travel to Yemen, receive terrorist training, and return to gun down two US Soldiers at a Little Rock, Arkansas Army recruiting station. We thwarted another Islamic terrorist plot in North Carolina which had US Marine Corps Base, Quantico as a target.

What have we done with all these prevalent trends? Nothing.

What we see are recalcitrant leaders who are refusing to confront the issue, Islamic terrorist infiltration into America, and possibly further into our Armed Services. Instead we have a multiculturalism and diversity syndrome on steroids.

Major Hasan should have never been transferred to Ft Hood, matter of fact he should have been Chaptered from the Army. His previous statements, poor evaluation reports, and the fact that the FBI had him under investigation for jihadist website posting should have been proof positive.

However, what we have is a typical liberal approach to find a victim, not the 13 and 30 Soldiers and Civilian, but rather the poor shooter. A shooter who we are told was a great American, who loved the Army and serving his Nation and the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) stating that his actions had nothing to do with religious belief.

We know that Major Hasan deliberately planned this episode; he did give away his possessions. He stood atop a table in the confined space of the Soldier Readiness Center shouting “Allahu Akhbar”, same chant as the 9-11 terrorists and those we fight against overseas in the Iraq and Afghanistan theaters of operation.

No one in leadership seems willing to sound the alarm for the American people; they are therefore complicit in any future attacks. Our Congress should suspend the insidious action to vote on a preposterous and unconstitutional healthcare bill and resolve the issue of “protecting the American people”.

The recent incidents in Dearborn Michigan, Boston Massachusetts, Dallas Texas, and Chicago Illinois should bear witness to the fact that we have an Islamic terrorism issue in America. And don’t have CAIR call me and try to issue a vanilla press statement; they are an illegitimate terrorist associated organization which should be disbanded.

We have Saudi Arabia funding close to 80% of the mosques in the United States, one right here in South Florida, Pompano Beach. Are we building churches and synagogues in Saudi Arabia? Are “Kaffirs” and “Infidels” allowed travel to Mecca?

So much for peaceful coexistence.

Saudi Arabia is sponsoring radical Imams who enter into our prisons and convert young men into a virulent Wahabbist ideology….one resulting in four individuals wanting to destroy synagogues in New York with plastic explosives. Thank God the explosives were dummy. They are sponsoring textbooks which present Islamic centric revisionist history in our schools.

We must recognize that there is an urgent need to separate the theo-political radical Islamic ideology out of our American society. We must begin to demand surveillance of suspected Imams and mosques that are spreading hate and preaching the overthrow of our Constitutional Republic……that speech is not protected under First Amendment, it is sedition and if done by an American treason.

There should not be some 30 Islamic terrorist training camps in America that has nothing to do with First Amendment, Freedom of Religion. The Saudis are not our friends and any American political figure who believes such is delusional.

When tolerance becomes a one way street it certainly leads to cultural suicide. We are on that street. Liberals cannot be trusted to defend our Republic, because their sympathies obviously lie with their perceived victim, Major Nidal Malik Hasan.

I make no apologies for these words, and anyone angered by them, please, go to Ft Hood and look into the eyes of the real victims. The tragedy at Ft Hood Texas did not have to happen. Consider now the feelings of those there and on every military installation in the world. Consider the feelings of the Warriors deployed into combat zones who now are concerned that their loved ones at home are in a combat zone.

NEW YORK — The five men facing trial in the Sept. 11 attacks will plead not guilty so that they can air their criticisms of U.S. foreign policy, the lawyer for one of the defendants said Sunday.

Scott Fenstermaker, the lawyer for accused terrorist Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, said the men would not deny their role in the 2001 attacks but “would explain what happened and why they did it.”

The U.S. Justice Department announced earlier this month that Ali and four other men accused of murdering nearly 3,000 people in the nation’s deadliest terrorist attack will face a civilian federal trial just blocks from the World Trade Center site.

Ali, also known as Ammar al-Baluchi, is a nephew of professed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Mohammed, Ali and the others will explain “their assessment of American foreign policy,” Fenstermaker said.

“Their assessment is negative,” he said.

Fenstermaker met with Ali last week at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. He has not spoken with the others but said the men have discussed the trial among themselves.

Fenstermaker was first quoted in The New York Times in Sunday’s editions.

Critics of Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to try the men in a New York City civilian courthourse have warned that the trial would provide the defendants with a propaganda platform.

Dean Boyd, a spokesman for the Department of Justice, said Sunday that while the men may attempt to use the trial to express their views, “we have full confidence in the ability of the courts and in particular the federal judge who may preside over the trial to ensure that the proceeding is conducted appropriately and with minimal disrupton, as federal courts have done in the past.”